Tarsier –the littlest alien
Despite being tiny and seemingly fragile the Tarsier is a predator, and is unique as the only primate to exclusively hunt live prey.
It is also unique in that it is a mix of two kinds of primates. Some of its features are those of prosimians like lemurs… and other features make it more monkey or ape like. The Philippine Tarsier seems to be a mostly solitary animal, males and females live apart. It’s seldom that couples are ever seen. They come together briefly to mate and then return to their separate, nocturnal lives. Once the Tarsier was common here, although always cryptic, shadowy…..rarely seen. And while food is more plentiful on the edges of the forest, out here, a Tarsier is more likely to be the hunted, than the hunter… Luis has always lived on Bohol and is now in his seventies. He gave up hunting Tarsiers long ago, but he remembers clearly his first encounter with one more than sixty years ago.
“Once when I was hunting in the forest at night I saw this strange little creature with huge eyes. I thought it was some sort of owl. I was so curious that I shot it. I went to pick it up and realised that it was not an owl, but this strange little animal about which I knew nothing at all.”
The Bohol people believed the forest was home to powerful spirits. They thought these spirits inhabited trees like this old fig, known as the ‘belete’ tree. Luis has always known this:“After I shot the Tarsier I found out that this animal belongs to the spirits that live in the forest. The spirits live in the belete tree and the Tarsiers are kept as pets. Legends say that if you harm a Tarsier then you would become sick and suffer bad luck, unless you apologised to the spirits for killing one of their pets.”
Even today, children whisper to the spirits of the belete tree, to let them pass safely. But very few old fig trees remain to house the spirits, and little forest remains for the Tarsier. In the last fifty years the landscape has been transformed. Where forests once stood, there are now fields of rice and other crops needed for a rapidly growing population. More than a million people live on the island of Bohol, and many are still subsistence farmers. Traditionally, forest was cleared by slashing and burning. Farmers saw the Tarsier as a rat-like creature which ate their crops. They were pleased to be rid of them. But myths surround this creature of the shadows. Local people believed that, after the fires, tarsiers ate the charcoal in the cool of the night. Hadn’t hunters noticed tarsiers in the forest with charcoal stains around their mouths? In the early 1950’s, one of the hunters of Bohol had a son. Luis knows him well.“I first met ‘Lito when he was only eight, and I’ve known him all his life since then, as his father and I were close friends.”
Carlito Pizzaras was born near Corella and has lived here all his life. His fascination and love for animals in the forest, especially the Tarsier, marked him out as different from other children. And though Carlito’s father is now dead, the old man still meets with the younger man he knew as a boy. They still share a passion for the forest. Carlito’s passion began forty years ago ……. ………when as a small boy, he followed his father into the forest to capture Tarsiers for the pet trade. (pause) Wild Tarsiers intrigued Carlito, and he decided to keep some as pets.“As a child I was always in the forest so I got to know lots of animals, but one, the ‘maomag’ or Tarsier I became especially fascinated with. I think that was because they look so different from any other forest animals.”
Local people call the Tarsier ‘maomag’, and ‘maomag’ cast it’s spell on the young ‘Lito’. He knew the stories of Tarsiers eating forest charcoal, but when he tried to feed it to his Tarsiers they died. Confused, he sat in the forest for nights on end to find the truth, and finally witnessed a Tarsier jump down on to the cool charcoal, and grab an insect which had been forced out by the burning. He had discovered why the Tarsier’s mouth was stained by charcoal.“People thought I was crazy because I’d always be in the forest trying to capture Tarsiers. I used to sell some and the others I’d keep at home. And then I had to spend hours capturing insects to feed them – so lots of people thought I was completely mad, driven crazy by Tarsiers.”
But Carlito wasn’t crazy … the charcoal eating story wasn’t true so maybe the other stories weren’t true either.
There were no books on Tarsiers – the only way was to find out for himself.
In the evenings, after school, he went alone into the forest to catch insects to feed his pets. In those days Tarsiers were more common, and easily caught.
They were kept in cages before being sold as pets at the local market, or sent to stores in far off cities like Manila.
It’s not surprising that they were popular as pets - they sit comfortably in your hand, and have huge, appealing eyes. As he learnt more and more, the young Carlito soon found out that most of the pet Tarsiers died within months. He decided that his days of hunting them to sell were over. With some fear he told his father of his decision. “At first my father was furious, but eventually he understood the reason why I had made the decision to stop hunting Tarsiers and to raise them at home.” While other boys of his age were playing, or working in the fields, Carlito preferred to spend his time in the forest. The villagers made fun of this unusual boy and his lonely obsession. They called him ‘the monkey boy’, and both adults and children ridiculed him. But Carlito ignored the jeering and kept going back to the forest. This was the beginning of his life’s work with the little aliens, a life that would one day change the fate of Tarsiers throughout the Philippines. In those days people were most likely to see Tarsiers as huddled, timid creatures in small cages. Unfortunately, they can still be seen this way today. With its cuddly toy appeal and wide eyes, many tourists, both local and foreign want to cuddle one… and perhaps take it home. Places like this are the only opportunity most people have of seeing a living Tarsier, but the experience is not pleasant for the animal. They are nocturnal; they need darkness, quiet and solitude. The constant handling and noise is very stressful. There is even a belief that Tarsiers find captivity so intolerable they will commit suicide. These days, tourist attractions on Bohol have permits to keep a few animals and often more are kept than the permit allows. But years ago there were no laws at all.
“Lots of people used to hunt Tarsiers to sell, others would simply kill them and people wouldn’t listen to you when you’d tell them to stop. I could see that Tarsiers were going, so I just made up the law, to stop people hunting and killing them.”
In the markets, he’d tell people that a law had been passed against selling Tarsiers… he even made up the fine and the prison sentence they risked if they didn’t stop. Once ridiculed as the monkey boy, he was taken seriously as the Tarsier man. Carlito’s knowledge and expertise began to attract attention far beyond the village of Corella. In 1996 some Bohol businessmen established the Philippine Tarsier Foundation …and it was no surprise when Carlito, who had devoted 40 years to protecting them, became its first paid employee. Soon afterwards the Philippine government declared the Tarsier a protected species. The Catholic Church is very influential here, and the first president of the Tarsier Foundation was Father Comacho. One of the board members is businessman, Mr Anos Fonacier, who has the belief and the financial resources to support the work of the Foundation. The Foundation has one aim - to save the ancient and mysterious Tarsier… and spearheading that effort is Carlito. Inland from the city of Tagbilaran, roads pass through a landscape of small farms. Fifteen kilometres away, one road leads through Carlito’s village of Corella, and into the forest surrounding the Tarsier Foundation. The foundation owns 134 hectares of forested limestone hills. For Carlito, it is like a dream come true. It is like a second home. This is his project, his forest. The man is doing the same job as the boy did forty years ago. He still goes out at night collecting insects for his Tarsiers… These days his dream is to build up a breeding programme for Philippine Tarsiers. If he succeeds, it will be a world first. Other attempts to breed Tarsiers in captivity have had dismal results. Most of the sanctuary is wild forest where wild Tarsiers hunt… He sometimes sees fleeting glimpses of them… and fleeting glimpses were all that early explorers ever saw… and what they didn’t see, they invented. The first drawings were as much imagination as observation. This appeared in 1705 and was entitled, ‘The Philippine Monkey’……… …….In an 1804 drawing, it has the appearance of a rabbit or perhaps even a kangaroo. This colour drawing described the Tarsier as a ‘small monkey with big, round eyes that never, or rarely, close.’ By 1896 the real animal is recognisable. The Philippine Tarsier ‘Tarsius syrichta’, is named from a Greek word meaning a player on the pipes of Pan. Yet, three hundred years after the Tarsier was first described, little is known about them. They are nocturnal, shy, hidden creatures.
Their eyes are huge, the largest, relatively, of any mammal.
There is a joint between the base of the skull and its spine which allows its head to turn almost 360 degrees…(pause) like the owl which the old hunter Luis once mistook it for.
The tarsier hunts by using both sight and sound. Its mobile ears work together to pinpoint the exact location of an insect. The long, slender fingers are ideal for grasping the branches which are its pathways through the forest……. …….the powerful hind legs give it strength enough to leap almost three metres, and its long tail is the perfect counterweight to help it balance. It is exclusively a hunter, and one which eats only live prey And that was about all that was known But now the secret life of the Philippine Tarsier is about to be revealed… END OF ACT II ACT III Irene Arboleda is coming to Bohol to make the first significant study of the Philippine tarsier in its natural environment. The rich diversity of unique plants and animals in the Philippines, has evolved because each island has long been isolated by the sea… Irene was drawn to Bohol by the mystery surrounding the animal, and the reputation of Carlito, the tarsier man. Tarsiers are found chiefly on Mindanao, where Irene was born…… …….also on Samar……. …….Leyte…….. …….and on Bohol, home to Carlito. But only Bohol offers a real opportunity to do ongoing research, because it has Carlito Pizzaras and the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary. So, finally, one March day Irene arrives to learn more about the tarsier, motivated by the same curiosity which tantalised Carlito 40 years before. Carlito and Irene are both southern Filipinos, and speak the same dialect. And Irene has long been interested in primates … 24:10“I’d read articles and books on women who did field work on other primate species and they were very inspiring and there was this particular article in National Geographic about Bireuté Galdikas in Indonesia who did a lot of research work on Orang-utans and there was this photo I saw in the magazine with her giving her baby a bath and her baby sharing the tub with another baby Orang , it was one of the most unforgettable photos that I have ever seen, Jane Goodal with the chimps in Tanzania was also very inspirational – was a very inspirational figure – so it’s hard being a woman and doing field work, you have to worry about things, children and husbands.”
Her quest means spending long periods from her home in Manila, her veterinary business, her husband and her two children. But her immediate problem is where to make a start? The sanctuary is land typical of Bohol – dense, secondary forest on steep hills – hard country to work in. Carlito knows where Tarsiers live in the forest, but Irene has to scientifically map their distribution. One of her aims is to determine how much forest a tarsier needs to survive. The forest doesn’t give up its secrets easily. In order to accurately track the movements of individual tarsiers, she marks trees, takes the compass bearing, then measures the distance to the next tree in a straight line of sight. She does this tree after tree, until she has covered 70 hectares of forest with a web of marked and numbered trees. Irene first tried to use the GPS tracking system, but soon found the forest canopy doesn’t allow for an accurate enough satellite fix. She is forced to abandon modern technology in favour of a much simpler, but more laborious, system. And after all this, she still has to find them.
Irene began by using mist nets, but the little animals become entangled and stressed.
So once again science bows to local knowledge – to the traditional skills which Carlito learnt from his father the tarsier hunter. The best time to catch one is during the day while they are resting………. ……. And the best way, by hand. Once the Tarsier is caught, Irene can weigh and measure each animal…… ……..the length of the hind legs……length of arm……body length…… ………length of ear; total length of body from the top of the head to the tip of the tail……. …….and the tail itself, which can be more than one and a half times the length of the Tarsier’s body. In all, she takes sixteen measurements and each animal is then released. She identifies and measures six females and four males. Ten little aliens are about to share their secrets which may benefit all of their kind. To enable Irene to find her Tarsiers, each is fitted with a radio collar. It looks large and awkward, but collar and transmitter weigh only eight grams. It’s designed so that it doesn’t hinder the Tarsier’s activities and so it can’t remove it. Once the collar is secured, the transmitter is live. A battery will last almost four months. When Irene has completed her study, each animal will be recaptured and the collar removed. Satisfied that the collar is safely attached, the tarsier is carefully put back where it was found. The entire process takes just ten minutes. But now she has to track them …at night. She begins her work each evening at dusk and continues until dawn…without radio collars her task would be impossible. By the dim light of a torch, for months on end, night after night, Irene and her helpers collect the information she needs. Once an animal is detected, its position is pinpointed by the two radio receivers – the same way a tarsier uses it’s two swivelling ears to locate prey. Every sighting is related back to one of the marked trees, and gradually a picture emerges of each Tarsier’s territory. Carlito has long known that males and females without babies live solitary lives that tarsiers are most active at dusk and dawn, criss crossing their territory in search of food – and Irene’s study scientifically confirms all this
Tarsiers may travel close to one and a half kilometres every night. That’s a lot of energy for such a small animal… so they fortify themselves with 7 or 8 insects during the hours of hunting.
A male seems to live in about six and a half hectares of forest. A huge area for a creature weighing 150 grams. The female has a similar body size but her territory is smaller. The male’s home range may overlap that of two or three females. Irene assumes that males will mate with more than one of them. These findings are all new and vitally important if Carlito and others are to ‘design’ the Tarsiers’ future in forests that are shrinking. That’s not easy for an animal that has lived for many millions of years under these skies. On Bohol human existence is far more recent, but still it stretches back, little changed, for centuries. Irene too has her routine The little aliens have more problems with the rain than getting wet. Their sensitive hearing amplifies the sound of rain on leaves making insect hunting nearly impossible. Fortunately, the rains often end as abruptly as they begin. Whatever the weather, Carlito and Irene track different tarsiers by picking up the static patterns on the radio receivers and noting their identity tags. During her study, some of the collared females give birth. The miracle of birth is one secret that few people have ever seen. Newborn Tarsier babies are the size of a human thumb. A large baby for such a small mother.
For the first few days, the mother carries the baby in her mouth like a cat carries kittens. After that, the mother must leave her baby alone in a safe place while she goes off to hunt. Like many human babies, it seems that Tarsiers are born with blue eyes, which change to brown after a few weeks. The baby is gradually weaned and must begin to learn to hunt. To encourage her baby’s hunting instinct, a mother will bring back a live cricket. The sooner it can hunt for itself, the better for both of them. It is a burden on the mother providing for two, and an infant left alone could be in danger. But there is a darker threat in the forest, a threat which may come from the young tarsier’s own kind. This forest can be the scene of brutal murder. With a bite to the back of the neck an infant Tarsier is silently killed. A male may kill any baby he doesn’t recognise. His crime of instinct means that the dead baby’s mother will quickly come back into season and he can mate with her… and the next offspring will be his. Many primates practice infanticide, and the Tarsier is one of them. Carlito has never seen this before, but he knows of a saying among the old Bohol hunters that you never see a dead Tarsier in the forest… and they have their own explanation: “One hunter told me that he’d seen a dead tarsier being carried by other tarsiers, and that they covered the body with stones. But in all the time I’ve been in the forest I’ve never seen anything like that.” The Tarsier is under more threat than just the disappearance of the forest – there are new and introduced predators on Bohol. Carlito patrols the fence around the sanctuary in an effort to keep out these predators – particularly cats. He checks for intrusion, or damage. He is gone for so many nights that his wife has begun to have suspicions about what he is doing, away so long :
“Most of my days and nights are spent at the sanctuary, and my wife is suspicious that its not just tarsiers that I’m after, that perhaps there is another girl.”
But Carlito’s passion is for his work. He is driven by his love of the little aliens, to protect them and one day to boost their numbers by successfully breeding them in the sanctuary.One of Irene’s urgent tasks is to find out which trees best suit the tarsier. The forests are shrinking fast.
“I had a comment from one of my thesis examiners – would you expect the Philippine forests to be around for the next fifteen years and it really struck me – and I thought ‘no probably not’. Well, there will probably be a scattering of a few secondary forests but primary forests definitely gone forever so I thought I would do a bit of my own contribution and make a difference.”
If she can identify the trees which insects like, they can plant more of them, to help prevent a looming disaster.
Carlito knows the local names for all of them, and with his help, Irene finds over one hundred species in the sanctuary. Irene has concluded her research. Her fieldwork will go towards a master’s thesis – the first long term scientific study of the Philippine Tarsier in the wild is all but complete. But first she feeds the mountains of data, painstakingly gathered over eight months, into her computer: tagged trees, compass bearings, tarsier movements gathered night after night… and overlapping maps of their territories. Information gathered about potential threats and loss of forest, provide the basis for graphs that estimate extinction rates. Results show that extinction is a grim possibility for the Tarsier. “Research wise I hope that there will be other people who will be interested to conduct more research work on tarsiers because I have just basically touched the surface just skimmed the surface and there is still more work to be done, especially in other parts of the country like Leyte and Mindanao because my study was just done in Bohol so the area was very limited and I hope that they will multiply some more and be around for another hundred years at least or two and for the future Filipino generation to enjoy.” Irene returns to her family in Manila. On Bohol in late November rain clouds gather and the chocolate hills are once again green and lush. This is the favourite time for the Tarsiers to mate. They will mate just once, on one night of the year, at the time of the full moon….. It is so brief, and so vital. Carlito may be the only person to have seen this extraordinary event (pause) until now. In early December, just one night after full moon, a male tarsier finds a female in season. There is little subtlety in his approach – he simply pursues her from branch to branch. She tries to avoid him… ….but finally his persistence is rewarded. And then she pushes him away: that’s it, Romeo, for another year. The male keeps on trying – but she will mate only once. Carlito has witnessed the mating of the Philippine Tarsier several times. He is perhaps the only person to have successfully bred them in captivity and his experience will be crucial in providing a possible future for the Tarsier. The tarsier gives birth to only one infant at a time. This slow reproduction rate is just one problem for its survival.. ….the diminishing forest is a greater one. Insects are easily found in this secondary forest, but Tarsiers are more vulnerable. Will 40 million years of evolution be snuffed out in just a few short decades?… …or will the Tarsiers’ adaptability see them through…..
Carlito enjoys one particular task at the sanctuary. He looks forward to talking about tarsiers to young people… they will be the farmers of tomorrow. His mission is to help them get to know and like the little aliens then they may have a secure future.
This school group is from the nearby village of Sikatuna, and although it is only four or five kilometres away, this is their first visit. The Tarsier has become so rare that many children have never seen one before. Carlito is careful not to stress the animals. Even though it is awake it wants to remain on its sleeping tree. Carlito doesn’t have to work hard to win over young hearts and minds… the Tarsiers do that on their own. It’s also a chance to pass on the knowledge he discovered as a boy. These visits are the opportunity for today’s children to ask the tarsier man questions. What sound does it make?
“….tarsier, maomag……whistling sound….”
SOUND FX Visitors always enjoy hearing Carlito tell the myths & legends that have grown up around the little forest spirit. One myth is that Tarsiers can smile. It’s a charming belief, but untrue. The enigmatic smile of the Tarsier is simply the way its jaw is shaped to fit its tiny, predatory, teeth. However, the fate of the Tarsier is no smiling matter. The sanctuary near Corella is only a tiny patch of forest among cultivated fields, but the Foundation hopes to buy and preserve more forest, and conserve corridors of trees between protected areas, so animals can move between breeding groups. Carlito’s dream, and his determination, is that the Tarsier will still be in the forest for his grandchildren to enjoy, and their grandchildren too. Filipinos celebrate their past with music and dance. An annual festival in Tagbilaran commemorates the Spanish arrival in Bohol in 1521. The people are particularly proud, that all those centuries ago, they were the first in the region to seal a pact with the Spanish … (pause) a pact that was sealed in blood. Carlito Pizzaras, the Tarsier man, may have created a bright future for an ancient animal, which was here long before the Spanish explorers. At the turn of the millennium, a new dance, based upon the movements of the Tarsier was created. It is now part of the culture and proudly performed. It’s a celebration of a tiny creature and the movements of the dancers seek to capture the powerful soul of the little forest spirit. The future of the Philippine Tarsier is uncertain… some consider it already endangered. Carlito has seen the numbers diminish greatly in his lifetime, but his dedicated work in one small sanctuary may yet help save the Philippine Tarsier on all of the islands where it lives. And why not… if long ago in the forests of Bohol a small boy had a dream, a dream to bring help to these spirits of the forest….. ………….then why shouldn’t that dream come true. CREDITS